4 comments:

One of my favorite episodes on "This American Life" was with people who had either had too much or too little testoterone (woman receiving testosterone injections who got enough for a football player; man who ceased to make testosterone) and how this affected their personalities.

Also, long ago, an article in New Yorker about "women who became men," and one of the transexuals saying that with her higher levels of testosterone she never felt cold anymore during the winter.

Oh, and in case anyone is getting confused, the above pertains to your essay on Estrogen Sheep, not the fiction, poetry, interviews, or reviews on Strange Horizons.

Yes, the effect of actual testosterone and estrogen changes and fluctuations on people can be tremendous. In the past few days, I've been reading around in a great book about transgender issues and history, The Riddle of Gender by Deborah Rudacille, which will probably influence some sort of more serious column at SH sometime. Fascinating stuff.

Have you read the Viewpoint column in the July 1985 issue of Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, "The Science-Fiction Of Sex Change", by Tom Rainbow? It deals with basically the same issues as your column here, but takes the other point of view. Unconvincingly, I think.